On the Western
Circuit
I
The man who played
the disturbing part in the two quiet lives hereafter depicted—no great man, in
any sense, by the way—first had knowledge of them on an October evening, in the
city of
He postponed till the morrow his attempt to examine the deserted edifice,
and turned his attention to the noise. It was compounded of steam barrel-organs, the clanging of gongs, the ringing of hand-
bells, the clack of rattles, and the undistinguishable shouts of men. A lurid
light hung in the air in the direction of the tumult. Thitherward he went,
passing under the arched gateway, along a straight street, and into the square.
He might have
searched
Their motions were
so rhythmical that they seemed to be moved by
machinery. And it presently appeared that they were
moved by machinery indeed; the figures being those of the patrons of swings,
see-saws, flying-leaps, above all of the three steam roundabouts which occupied
the centre of the position. It was from the latter that the din of steam-organs
came.
Throbbing humanity
in full light was, on second thoughts, better than architecture in the dark.
The young man, lighting a short pipe, and putting his hat on one side and one
hand in his pocket, to throw himself into harmony with his new environment,
drew near to the largest and most patronized of the steam circuses, as the roundabouts were called by their owners. This was one of
brilliant finish, and it was now in full revolution. The musical instrument
around which and to whose tones the riders revolved, directed its
trumpet-mouths of brass upon the young man, and the long plate-glass mirrors
set at angles, which revolved with the machine, flashed the gyrating personages
and hobby horses kaleidoscopically into his eyes.
It could now be seen that he was unlike the majority of the
crowd. A gentlemanly young fellow, one of the species found in large towns
only, and London particularly, built on delicate lines, well, though not
fashionably dressed, he appeared to belong to the professional class; he had
nothing square or practical about his look, much that was curvilinear and
sensuous. Indeed, some would have called him a man not altogether typical of
the middle-class male of a century wherein sordid ambition is the
master-passion that seems to be taking the time-honoured
place of love.
The revolving
figures passed before his eyes with an unexpected and quiet grace in a throng
whose natural movements did not suggest gracefulness or quietude as a rule. By
some contrivance there was imparted to each of the hobby-horses a motion which
was really the triumph and perfection of roundabout inventiveness—a galloping
rise and fall, so timed that, of each pair of steeds, one was on the spring
while the other was on the pitch. The riders were quite
fascinated by these equine undulations in this most delightful
holiday-game of our times. There were riders as young as six,
and as old as sixty years, with every age between. At first
it was difficult to catch a personality, but by and by the observer's eyes centred on the prettiest girl out of the several pretty
ones revolving.
It was not that
one with the light frock and light hat whom he had been at first attracted by;
no, it was the one with the black cape, grey skirt, light gloves and—no, not
even she, but the one behind her; she with the crimson skirt, dark jacket,
brown hat and brown gloves. Unmistakably that was the prettiest girl.
Having finally
selected her, this idle spectator studied her as well as he was able during
each of her brief transits across his visual field. She was absolutely
unconscious of everything save the act of riding: her features were rapt
in an ecstatic dreaminess; for the moment she did not know her age or her
history or her lineaments, much less her troubles. He himself was full of vague
latter-day glooms and popular melancholies, and it was a refreshing sensation
to behold this young thing then and there, absolutely
as happy as if she were in a
Dreading
the moment when the inexorable stoker, grimily lurking behind the glittering
rococo-work, should decide that this set of riders had had their pennyworth,
and bring the whole concern of steam-engine, horses, mirrors, trumpets, drums,
cymbals, and such- like to pause and silence, he waited for her every
reappearance, glancing indifferently over the intervening forms, including the
two plainer girls, the old woman and child, the two youngsters, the
newly-married couple, the old man with a clay pipe, the sparkish
youth with a ring, the young ladies in the chariot, the pair of
journeyman-carpenters, and others, till his select country beauty followed on
again in her place. He had never
seen a fairer product of nature, and at each round she
made a deeper mark in his sentiments. The stoppage then came, and the sighs of
the riders were audible.
He moved round to
the place at which he reckoned she would alight; but she retained her seat. The
empty saddles began to refill, and she plainly was deciding to have another
turn. The young man drew up to the side of her steed, and pleasantly asked her
if she had enjoyed her ride.
'O yes!' she said,
with dancing eyes. 'It has been quite unlike anything I have ever felt in my
life before!'
It was not
difficult to fall into conversation with her. Unreserved- -too unreserved—by
nature, she was not experienced enough to be reserved by art, and after a
little coaxing she answered his remarks readily. She had come to live in Melchester from a village on the Great Plain, and this was
the first time that she had ever seen a steam-circus; she could not understand
how such wonderful machines were made. She had come to
the city on the invitation of Mrs. Harnham, who had
taken her into her household to train her as a servant, if she showed any
aptitude. Mrs. Harnham was a young lady
who before she married had been Miss Edith White, living in the country near
the speaker's cottage; she was now very kind to her through knowing her in
childhood so well. She was even taking the trouble to educate her. Mrs. Harnham was the only friend she had in the world, and being
without children had wished to have her near her in preference to anybody else,
though she had only lately come; allowed her to do almost as she liked, and to
have a holiday whenever she asked for it. The husband of this kind young lady was a rich wine-merchant of the town, but Mrs. Harnham did not care much about him. In the daytime you could see the house from where they were
talking. She, the speaker, liked Melchester better
than the lonely country, and she was going to have a new hat for next Sunday
that was to cost fifteen and ninepence.
Then she inquired
of her acquaintance where he lived, and he told her in
Then
the pleasure-machine started again, and, to the light-hearted girl, the figure
of the handsome young man, the market-square with its lights and crowd, the
houses beyond, and the world at large, began moving round as before, countermoving in the revolving mirrors on her right hand,
she being as it were the fixed point in an undulating, dazzling, lurid
universe, in which loomed forward most prominently of all the form of her late
interlocutor. Each time that she
approached the half of her orbit that lay nearest him they gazed at each other
with smiles, and with that unmistakable expression which means so little at the
moment, yet so often leads up to passion, heart-ache, union, disunion,
devotion, overpopulation, drudgery, content, resignation, despair.
When the horses
slowed anew he stepped to her side and proposed
another heat. 'Hang the expense for once,' he said. 'I'll pay!'
She laughed till the tears came.
'Why do you laugh,
dear?' said he.
'Because—you are
so genteel that you must have plenty of money, and only say that for fun!' she
returned.
'Ha-ha!' laughed
the young man in unison, and gallantly producing his money she was enabled to whirl on again.
As
he stood smiling there in the motley crowd, with his pipe in his hand, and clad
in the rough pea-jacket and wideawake that he had put
on for his stroll, who would have supposed him to be Charles Bradford Raye, Esquire, stuff-gownsman, educated at Wintoncester, called to the Bar at Lincoln's-Inn, now going
the Western Circuit, merely detained in Melchester by
a small arbitration after his brethren had moved on to the next county-town?
II
The square was overlooked from its remoter corner by the house of which
the young girl had spoken, a dignified residence of considerable size, having
several windows on each floor. Inside one of these, on the first floor, the
apartment being a large drawing- room, sat a lady, in
appearance from twenty-eight to thirty years of age. The blinds were still undrawn, and the lady was absently
surveying the weird scene without, her cheek resting on her hand. The room was
unlit from within, but enough of the glare from the market-place
entered it to reveal the lady's face. She was what is called an interesting
creature rather than a handsome woman; dark- eyed,
thoughtful, and with sensitive lips.
A man sauntered
into the room from behind and came forward.
'O, Edith, I
didn't see you,' he said. 'Why are you sitting here in the dark?'
'I am looking at
the fair,' replied the lady in a languid voice.
'Oh? Horrid nuisance every year! I wish it could be put a stop
to'
'I like it.'
'H'm. There's no accounting for taste.'
For a moment he gazed from the window with her, for politeness
sake, and then went out again.
In a few minutes she rang.
'Hasn't Anna come
in?' asked Mrs. Harnham.
'No m'm.'
'She ought to be
in by this time. I meant her to go for ten minutes only.'
'Shall I go and
look for her, m'm?' said the house-maid
alertly.
'No. It is not
necessary: she is a good girl and will come soon.'
However, when the
servant had gone Mrs. Harnham arose, went up to her
room, cloaked and bonneted herself, and proceeded
downstairs, where she found her husband.
'I want to see the
fair,' she said; 'and I am going to look for Anna. I
have made myself responsible for her, and must see she comes to no harm. She
ought to be indoors. Will you come with me?'
'Oh, she's all
right. I saw her on one of those whirligig things,
talking to her young man as I came in. But I'll go if you wish, though I'd
rather go a hundred miles the other way.'
'Then please do
so. I shall come to no harm alone.'
She left the house
and entered the crowd which thronged the market-
place, where she soon discovered Anna, seated on the revolving horse. As soon
as it stopped Mrs. Harnham
advanced and said severely, 'Anna, how can you be such a wild girl? You were
only to be out for ten minutes.'
Anna looked blank,
and the young man, who had dropped into the background, came to her assistance.
'Please don't
blame her,' he said politely. 'It is my fault that she has stayed. She looked
so graceful on the horse that I induced her to go
round again. I assure you that she has been quite safe.'
'In that case I'll
leave her in your hands,' said Mrs. Harnham, turning
to retrace her steps.
But this for the moment it was not so easy to do.
Something had attracted the crowd to a spot in their rear, and the
wine-merchant's wife, caught by its sway, found herself pressed against Anna's
acquaintance without power to move away. Their faces were within a few inches
of each other, his breath fanned her cheek as well as
Anna's. They could do no other than smile at the accident; but neither spoke, and each waited passively. Mrs. Harnham then felt a man's hand clasping her fingers, and
from the look of consciousness on the young fellow's face
she knew the hand to be his: she also knew that from the position of the girl
he had no other thought than that the imprisoned hand was Anna's. What prompted
her to refrain from undeceiving him she could hardly tell.
Not content with holding the hand, he playfully slipped two of his fingers
inside her glove, against her palm. Thus matters
continued till the pressure lessened; but several minutes passed before the
crowd thinned sufficiently to allow Mrs. Harnham to
withdraw.
'How did they get to know each other, I wonder?' she mused as she
retreated. 'Anna is really very forward—and he very wicked and nice.'
She was so gently stirred with the stranger's manner and voice,
with the tenderness of his idle touch, that instead of re-entering the house
she turned back again and observed the pair from a screened nook. Really she argued (being little less impulsive than Anna
herself) it was very excusable in Anna to encourage him, however she might have
contrived to make his acquaintance; he was so gentlemanly, so fascinating, had
such beautiful eyes. The thought that he was several years her junior produced
a reasonless sigh.
At length the
couple turned from the roundabout towards the door of Mrs. Harnham's
house, and the young man could be heard saying that he
would accompany her home. Anna, then, had found a lover, apparently a very
devoted one. Mrs. Harnham was quite interested in
him. When they drew near the door of the wine-merchant's house, a comparatively
deserted spot by this time, they stood invisible for a little while in the
shadow of a wall, where they separated, Anna going on to the entrance, and her
acquaintance returning across the square.
'Anna,' said Mrs. Harnham, coming up. 'I've been looking at you! That young
man kissed you at parting I am almost sure.'
'Well,' stammered
Anna; 'he said, if I didn't mind—it would do me no
harm, and, and, him a great deal of good!'
'Ah, I thought so!
And he was a stranger till to-night?'
'Yes ma'am.'
'Yet I warrant you
told him your name and every thing about yourself?'
'He asked me.'
'But he didn't tell you his?'
'Yes ma'am, he
did!' cried Anna victoriously. 'It is Charles Bradford, of
'Well, if he's
respectable, of course I've nothing to say against your knowing him,' remarked
her mistress, prepossessed, in spite of general principles, in the young man's favour. 'But I must reconsider all that, if he attempts to
renew your acquaintance. A country-bred girl like you, who has never lived in Melchester till this month, who had hardly ever seen a
black-coated man till you came here, to be so sharp as to capture a young
Londoner like him!'
'I didn't capture
him. I didn't do anything,' said Anna, in confusion.
When
she was indoors and alone Mrs. Harnham thought what a
well-bred and chivalrous young man Anna's companion had seemed. There had been a magic in his wooing touch of her
hand; and she wondered how he had come to be attracted
by the girl.
The next morning
the emotional Edith Harnham went to the usual week-
day service in Melchester cathedral. In crossing the
Close through the fog she again perceived him who had
interested her the previous evening, gazing up thoughtfully at the high-piled
architecture of the nave: and as soon as she had taken her seat he entered and
sat down in a stall opposite hers.
He did not
particularly heed her; but Mrs. Harnham was
continually occupying her eyes with him, and wondered more than ever what had attracted him in her unfledged maid-servant.
The mistress was almost as unaccustomed as the maiden
herself to the end-of-the-age young man, or she might have wondered less. Raye, having looked about him awhile, left abruptly,
without regard to the service that was proceeding; and Mrs. Harnham—lonely,
impressionable creature that she was—took no further interest in praising the
Lord. She wished she had married a
III
The calendar at Melchester had been light, occupying the court only a few
hours; and the assizes at Casterbridge, the next county-town on the Western Circuit, having no business for Raye, he had not gone thither. At the next town after that
they did not open till the following Monday, trials to
begin on Tuesday morning. In the natural order of things Raye would have arrived at the latter place on Monday
afternoon; but it was not till the middle of Wednesday that his gown and grey
wig, curled in tiers, in the best fashion of Assyrian bas- reliefs,
were seen blowing and bobbing behind him as he hastily walked up the High
Street from his lodgings. But though he entered
the assize building there was nothing for him to do, and sitting at the blue
baize table in the well of the court, he mended pens with a mind far away from
the case in progress. Thoughts of unpremeditated conduct, of which a week
earlier he would not have believed himself capable, threw him into a mood of dissatisfied depression.
He
had contrived to see again the pretty rural maiden Anna, the day after the
fair, had walked out of the city with her to the earthworks of Old Melchester, and feeling a violent fancy for her, had
remained in Melchester all Sunday, Monday, and
Tuesday; by persuasion obtaining walks and meetings with the girl six or seven
times during the interval; had in brief won her, body and soul.
He supposed it
must have been owing to the seclusion in which he had lived of late in town
that he had given way so unrestrainedly to a passion
for an artless creature whose inexperience had, from the first, led her to
place herself unreservedly in his hands. Much he deplored trifling with her
feelings for the sake of a passing desire; and he could only hope that she
might not live to suffer on his account.
She had begged him
to come to her again; entreated him; wept. He had promised that he would do so,
and he meant to carry out that promise. He could not desert her now. Awkward as such unintentional connections were, the interspace of a hundred miles—which to a girl of her
limited capabilities was like a thousand—would effectually hinder this summer
fancy from greatly encumbering his life; while thought of her simple love might
do him the negative good of keeping him from idle pleasures in town when he
wished to work hard. His circuit journeys would take him to Melchester three or four times a
year; and then he could always see her.
The pseudonym, or
rather partial name, that he had given her as his before knowing how far the
acquaintance was going to carry him, had been spoken on the spur of the moment,
without any ulterior intention whatever. He had not afterwards disturbed Anna's
error, but on leaving her he had felt bound to give her an address at a
stationer's not far from his chambers, at which she might write to him under
the initials 'C. B.'
In due time Raye returned to his
An unexpected
feature in that peasant maiden's conduct was that she had not as yet written to him, though he had told her she might do
so if she wished. Surely a young creature had never
before been so reticent in such circumstances. At length he sent her a brief
line, positively requesting her to write. There was no answer by the return
post, but the day after a letter in a neat feminine hand, and
bearing the Melchester post-mark, was handed to him
by the stationer.
The fact alone of
its arrival was sufficient to satisfy his imaginative sentiment. He was not
anxious to open the epistle, and in truth did not begin to read it for nearly
half-an-hour, anticipating readily its terms of passionate retrospect and
tender adjuration. When at last he turned his feet to the fireplace and unfolded
the sheet, he was surprised and pleased to find that neither extravagance nor
vulgarity was there. It was the most charming little missive he had ever
received from woman. To be sure the language was
simple and the ideas were slight; but it was so self- possessed; so purely that
of a young girl who felt her womanhood to be enough for her dignity that he
read it through twice. Four sides were filled, and a few lines written across,
after the fashion of former days; the paper, too, was common, and not of the
latest shade and surface. But what of those things? He
had received letters from women who were fairly called ladies,
but never so sensible, so human a letter as this. He could not single out any
one sentence and say it was at all remarkable or clever; the ensemble of the
letter it was which won him; and beyond the one request that he would write or
come to her again soon there was nothing to show her sense of a claim upon him.
To
write again and develop a correspondence was the last thing Raye
would have preconceived as his conduct in such a situation; yet he did send a
short, encouraging line or two, signed with his pseudonym, in which he asked
for another letter, and cheeringly promised that he would try to see her again
on some near day, and would never forget how much they had been to each other
during their short acquaintance.
IV
To return now to
the moment at which Anna, at Melchester, had received
Raye's letter.
It had been put
into her own hand by the postman on his morning
rounds. She flushed down to her neck on receipt of it, and turned it over and over. 'It is mine?' she said.
'Why, yes, can't
you see it is?' said the postman, smiling as he
guessed the nature of the document and the cause of the confusion.
'O yes, of
course!' replied Anna, looking at the letter, forcedly tittering, and blushing
still more.
Her look of
embarrassment did not leave her with the postman's
departure. She opened the envelope, kissed its contents, put away the letter in
her pocket, and remained musing till her eyes filled
with tears.
A few minutes later she carried up a cup of tea to Mrs. Harnham in her bed-chamber. Anna's mistress looked at her,
and said: 'How dismal you seem this morning, Anna. What's the matter?'
'I'm not dismal, I'm glad; only I—' She stopped to stifle
a sob.
'Well?'
'I've got a
letter—and what good is it to me, if I can't read a word in it!'
'Why, I'll read
it, child, if necessary.'
'But this is from
somebody—I don't want anybody to read it but myself!' Anna murmured.
'I shall not tell
anybody. Is it from that young man?'
'I think so.' Anna
slowly produced the letter, saying: 'Then will you read it to me, ma'am?'
This was the
secret of Anna's embarrassment and flutterings. She
could neither read nor write. She had grown up under the care of an aunt by
marriage, at one of the lonely hamlets on the Great Mid-
Wessex Plain where, even in days of national
education, there had been no school within a distance of two miles. Her aunt
was an ignorant woman; there had been nobody to investigate Anna's circumstances,
nobody to care about her learning the rudiments;
though, as often in such cases, she had been well fed and clothed and not
unkindly treated. Since she had come to live at Melchester
with Mrs. Harnham, the latter, who took a kindly
interest in the girl, had taught her to speak correctly, in which
accomplishment Anna showed considerable readiness, as is not
unusual with the illiterate; and soon became quite fluent in the use of
her mistress's phraseology. Mrs. Harnham also
insisted upon her getting a spelling and copy book,
and beginning to practise in these. Anna was slower
in this branch of her education, and meanwhile here was the letter.
Edith Harnham's large dark eyes expressed some interest in the
contents, though, in her character of mere interpreter, she threw into her tone
as much as she could of mechanical passiveness. She read the short epistle on
to its concluding sentence, which idly requested Anna to send him a tender
answer.
'Now—you'll do it for me, won't you, dear mistress?' said Anna
eagerly. 'And you'll do it as well as ever you can, please? Because I couldn't bear him to think I am not able to do it myself. I
should sink into the earth with shame if he knew that!'
From some words in
the letter Mrs. Harnham was
led to ask questions, and the answers she received confirmed her suspicions.
Deep concern filled Edith's heart at perceiving how the girl had committed her
happiness to the issue of this new-sprung attachment. She blamed herself for
not interfering in a flirtation which had resulted so seriously for the poor
little creature in her charge; though at the time of seeing the pair together
she had a feeling that it was hardly within her province to nip young affection
in the bud. However, what was done could not be
undone, and it behoved her now, as Anna's only
protector, to help her as much as she could. To Anna's eager request that she,
Mrs. Harnham, should compose and write the answer to
this young London man's letter, she felt bound to accede, to keep alive his
attachment to the girl if possible; though in other circumstances she might
have suggested the cook as an amanuensis.
A tender reply was thereupon concocted, and set down in Edith Harnham's
hand. This letter it had been which Raye had
received and delighted in. Written in the presence of Anna it certainly was,
and on Anna's humble note-paper, and in a measure indited by the young girl; but the life, the spirit, the individuality,
were Edith Harnham's.
'Won't you at
least put your name yourself?' she said. 'You can manage to write that by this
time?'
'No, no,' said
Anna, shrinking back. 'I should do it so bad. He'd be ashamed of me, and never
see me again!'
The note, so
prettily requesting another from him, had, as we have seen,
power enough in its pages to bring one. He declared it to be such a pleasure to hear from her that she must write
every week. The same process of manufacture was accordingly
repeated by Anna and her mistress, and continued for several weeks in
succession; each letter being penned and suggested by Edith, the girl
standing by; the answer read and commented on by Edith, Anna standing by and
listening again.
Late on a winter
evening, after the dispatch of the sixth letter, Mrs. Harnham
was sitting alone by the remains of her fire. Her husband had retired to bed,
and she had fallen into that fixity of musing which takes no count of hour or
temperature. The state of mind had been brought about in Edith by a strange thing which she had done that day. For the first time since Raye's visit Anna had gone to stay over a night or two with
her cottage friends on the Plain, and in her absence had arrived, out of its
time, a letter from Raye. To this
Edith had replied on her own responsibility, from the depths of her own heart,
without waiting for her maid's collaboration. The luxury of writing to him what
would be known to no consciousness but his was great,
and she had indulged herself therein.
Why was it a luxury?
Edith Harnham led a lonely life. Influenced by the belief of the
British parent that a bad marriage with its aversions is better than free
womanhood with its interests, dignity, and leisure, she had consented to marry
the elderly wine-merchant as a pis aller, at the age of seven-and-twenty—some three years
before this date—to find afterwards that she had made a mistake. That contract
had left her still a woman whose deeper nature had never been
stirred.
She was now
clearly realizing that she had become possessed to the bottom of her soul with
the image of a man to whom she was hardly so much as a name. From
the first he had attracted her by his looks and voice; by his tender touch;
and, with these as generators, the writing of letter after letter and the reading
of their soft answers had insensibly developed on her side an emotion which
fanned his; till there had resulted a magnetic reciprocity between the
correspondents, notwithstanding that one of them wrote in a character not her
own. That he had been able to seduce another woman in two days was his
crowning though unrecognized fascination for her as the she-animal.
They were her own
impassioned and pent-up ideas—lowered to monosyllabic phraseology in order to
keep up the disguise—that Edith put into letters signed with another name, much
to the shallow Anna's delight, who, unassisted, could not for the world have
conceived such pretty fancies for winning him, even had she been able to write
them. Edith found that it was these, her own foisted-in sentiments, to which
the young barrister mainly responded. The few sentences occasionally added from
Anna's own lips made apparently no impression upon him.
The letter-writing in her absence Anna never discovered; but on
her return the next morning she declared she wished to see her lover about
something at once, and begged Mrs. Harnham to ask him
to come.
There was a
strange anxiety in her manner which did not escape
Mrs. Harnham, and ultimately resolved itself into a
flood of tears. Sinking down at Edith's knees, she made confession that the
result of her relations with her lover it would soon become necessary to
disclose.
Edith Harnham was generous enough to be very far from inclined to
cast Anna adrift at this conjuncture. No true woman ever is so inclined from her
own personal point of view, however prompt she may be in taking such steps to
safeguard those dear to her. Although she had written to Raye
so short a time previously, she instantly penned another Anna-note hinting
clearly though delicately the state of affairs.
Raye replied by a hasty line to say how much he was affected by her news: he felt that he must run down to
see her almost immediately.
But a week later the girl came to her mistress's room
with another note, which on being read informed her that after all he could not
find time for the journey. Anna was broken with grief; but by Mrs. Harnham's counsel strictly refrained from hurling at him
the reproaches and bitterness customary from young women so situated. One thing
was imperative: to keep the young man's romantic interest in her alive. Rather
therefore did Edith, in the name of her protegee,
request him on no account to be distressed about the looming event, and not to
inconvenience himself to hasten down. She desired
above everything to be no weight upon him in his career, no clog upon his high
activities. She had wished him to know what had befallen: he was to dismiss it
again from his mind. Only he must write tenderly as ever, and when he should
come again on the spring circuit it would be soon enough to discuss what had better be done.
It may well be supposed that Anna's own feelings had not been
quite in accord with these generous expressions; but the mistress's judgment
had ruled, and Anna had acquiesced. 'All I want is that niceness you can so
well put into your letters, my dear, dear mistress, and that I can't for the
life o' me make up out of my own head; though I mean the same thing and feel it
exactly when you've written it down!'
When the letter had been sent off, and Edith Harnham
was left alone, she bowed herself on the back of her chair and wept.
'I wish it was
mine—I wish it was!' she murmured. 'Yet how can I say such a wicked thing!'
V
The letter moved Raye considerably when it reached him. The intelligence
itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him in
relation to it. The absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to his
interests, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a nobility of
character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind.
'God forgive me!'
he said tremulously. 'I have been a wicked wretch. I did not know she was such
a treasure as this!'
He reassured her
instantly; declaring that he would not of course desert her, that he would
provide a home for her somewhere. Meanwhile she was to stay where she was as
long as her mistress would allow her.
But a misfortune supervened in this direction. Whether
an inkling of Anna's circumstances reached the knowledge of Mrs. Harnham's husband or not cannot be said,
but the girl was compelled, in spite of Edith's entreaties, to leave the house.
By her own choice she decided to go back for a while
to the cottage on the Plain. This arrangement led to a
consultation as to how the correspondence should be carried on; and in the
girl's inability to continue personally what had been begun in her name, and in
the difficulty of their acting in concert as heretofore, she requested Mrs. Harnham—the only well-to-do friend she had in the world—to
receive the letters and reply to them off-hand, sending them on afterwards to
herself on the Plain, where she might at least get some neighbour
to read them to her, if a trustworthy one could be met with. Anna and
her box then departed for the Plain.
Thus
it befel that Edith Harnham
found herself in the strange position of having to correspond, under no
supervision by the real woman, with a man not her husband, in terms which were
virtually those of a wife, concerning a condition that was not Edith's at all;
the man being one for whom, mainly through the sympathies involved in playing
this part, she secretly cherished a predilection, subtle and imaginative truly,
but strong and absorbing. She
opened each letter, read it as if intended for herself,
and replied from the promptings of her own heart and no other.
Throughout this
correspondence, carried on in the girl's absence, the high-strung Edith Harnham lived in the ecstasy of fancy; the vicarious
intimacy engendered such a flow of passionateness as
was never exceeded. For conscience' sake Edith at first sent on each of his
letters to Anna, and even rough copies of her replies; but later on these
so-called copies were much abridged, and many letters on both sides were not
sent on at all.
Though selfish,
and, superficially at least, infested with the self- indulgent vices of
artificial society, there was a substratum of honesty and fairness in Raye's character. He had really a tender regard for the
country girl, and it grew more tender than ever when
he found her apparently capable of expressing the deepest sensibilities in the
simplest words. He meditated, he wavered; and finally resolved to consult his
sister, a maiden lady much older than himself, of
lively sympathies and good intent. In making this confidence
he showed her some of the letters.
'She seems fairly
educated,' Miss Raye observed. 'And
bright in ideas. She expresses herself with a taste that must be
innate.'
'Yes. She writes
very prettily, doesn't she, thanks to these elementary schools?'
'One is drawn out
towards her, in spite of one's self, poor thing.'
The upshot of the
discussion was that though he had not been directly advised to do it, Raye wrote, in his real name, what he would never have
decided to write on his own responsibility; namely
that he could not live without her, and would come down in the spring and
shelve her looming difficulty by marrying her.
This bold
acceptance of the situation was made known to Anna by
Mrs. Harnham driving out immediately to the cottage
on the Plain. Anna jumped for joy like a little child. And
poor, crude directions for answering appropriately were given to Edith Harnham, who on her return to the city carried them out
with warm intensification.
'O!' she groaned,
as she threw down the pen. 'Anna—poor good little fool—hasn't
intelligence enough to appreciate him! How should she? While
I—don't bear his child!'
It was now
February. The correspondence had continued altogether for four months; and the
next letter from Raye contained incidentally a
statement of his position and prospects. He said that in offering to wed her he
had, at first, contemplated the step of retiring from a profession which
hitherto had brought him very slight emolument, and which, to speak plainly, he
had thought might be difficult of practice after his union with her. But the unexpected mines of brightness and warmth that her
letters had disclosed to be lurking in her sweet nature had led him to abandon
that somewhat sad prospect. He felt sure that, with her powers of development,
after a little private training in the social forms of
'O—poor fellow,
poor fellow!' mourned Edith Harnham.
Her distress now
raged as high as her infatuation. It was she who had wrought him to this
pitch—to a marriage which meant his ruin; yet she
could not, in mercy to her maid, do anything to hinder his plan. Anna was
coming to Melchester that week, but she could hardly
show the girl this last reply from the young man; it told too much of the
second individuality that had usurped the place of the first.
Anna came, and her
mistress took her into her own room for privacy. Anna began by saying with some
anxiety that she was glad the wedding was so near.
'O Anna!' replied
Mrs. Harnham. 'I think we must tell him all—that I
have been doing your writing for you?—lest he should not know it till after you
become his wife, and it might lead to dissension and recriminations—'
'O mis'ess, dear mis'ess—please don't tell him now!' cried Anna in distress. 'If you were to
do it, perhaps he would not marry me; and what should I do then? It would be
terrible what would come to me! And
I am getting on with my writing, too. I have brought with me the copybook you
were so good as to give me, and I practise every day,
and though it is so, so hard, I shall do it well at last, I believe, if I keep
on trying.'
Edith looked at
the copybook. The copies had been set by herself, and
such progress as the girl had made was in the way of grotesque facsimile of her
mistress's hand. But even if Edith's flowing caligraphy were reproduced the inspiration would be another
thing.
'You do it so
beautifully,' continued Anna, 'and say all that I want to say so much better
than I could say it, that I do hope you won't leave me in the lurch just now!'
'Very well,'
replied the other. 'But I—but I thought I ought not to
go on!'
'Why?'
Her strong desire
to confide her sentiments led Edith to answer truly:
'Because
of its effect upon me.'
'But it can't have
any!'
'Why,
child?'
'Because you are
married already!' said Anna with lucid simplicity.
'Of course it
can't,' said her mistress hastily; yet glad, despite her conscience, that two
or three outpourings still remained to her. 'But you
must concentrate your attention on writing your name as I write it here.'
VI
Soon Raye wrote about the wedding. Having decided to make the
best of what he feared was a piece of romantic folly,
he had acquired more zest for the grand experiment. He wished the ceremony to
be in
It was a muddy morning
in March when Raye alighted from a four-wheel cab at
the door of a registry-office in the S.W. district of London, and carefully
handed down Anna and her companion Mrs. Harnham. Anna
looked attractive in the somewhat fashionable clothes which Mrs. Harnham had helped her to buy, though not quite so
attractive as, an innocent child, she had appeared in her country gown on the
back of the wooden horse at Melchester Fair.
Mrs. Harnham had come up this morning by an early train, and a
young man—a friend of Raye's—having met them at the
door, all four entered the registry-office together. Till
an hour before this time Raye had never known the
wine-merchant's wife, except at that first casual encounter, and in the flutter
of the performance before them he had little opportunity for more than a brief
acquaintance. The contract of marriage at a registry is soon
got through; but somehow, during its progress, Raye
discovered a strange and secret gravitation between himself and Anna's friend.
The formalities of
the wedding—or rather ratification of a previous union—being concluded, the
four went in one cab to Raye's lodgings, newly taken
in a new suburb in preference to a house, the rent of which he could ill afford
just then. Here Anna cut the little cake which Raye had bought at a pastrycook's
on his way home from
At last, more disappointed
than he cared to own, he said, 'Mrs. Harnham, my
darling is so flurried that she doesn't know what she
is doing or saying. I see that after this event a little quietude will be
necessary before she gives tongue to that tender philosophy which she used to
treat me to in her letters.'
They
had planned to start early that afternoon for Knollsea,
to spend the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for
departure was drawing near Raye asked his wife if she
would go to the writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his
sister, who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that
the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping to know
her well now that she was the writer's sister as well as Charles's.
'Say it in the
pretty poetical way you know so well how to adopt,' he added, 'for I want you
particularly to win her, and both of you to be dear friends.'
Anna looked
uneasy, but departed to her task, Raye remaining to
talk to their guest. Anna was a long while absent, and her husband suddenly
rose and went to her.
He found her still
bending over the writing-table, with tears brimming up in her eyes; and he looked
down upon the sheet of note- paper with some interest, to discover with what
tact she had expressed her good-will in the delicate
circumstances. To his surprise she had progressed but
a few lines, in the characters and spelling of a child of eight, and with the
ideas of a goose.
'Anna,' he said,
staring; 'what's this?'
'It only
means—that I can't do it any better!' she answered, through her tears.
'Eh? Nonsense!'
'I can't!' she
insisted, with miserable, sobbing hardihood. 'I—I— didn't
write those letters, Charles! I only told her what to
write! And not always that! But
I am learning, O so fast, my dear, dear husband! And you'll
forgive me, won't you, for not telling you before?' She slid to her knees,
abjectly clasped his waist and laid her face against him.
He stood a few
moments, raised her, abruptly turned, and shut the door upon her, rejoining
Edith in the drawing-room. She saw that something
untoward had been discovered, and their eyes remained fixed on each other.
'Do I guess
rightly?' he asked, with wan quietude. 'You were her scribe through all this?'
'It was
necessary,' said Edith.
'Did she dictate
every word you ever wrote to me?'
'Not every word.'
'In
fact, very little?'
'Very
little.'
'You wrote a great
part of those pages every week from your own conceptions, though in her name!'
'Yes.'
'Perhaps you wrote
many of the letters when you were alone, without communication with her?'
'I did.'
He turned to the
bookcase, and leant with his hand over his face; and Edith, seeing his
distress, became white as a sheet.
'You have deceived
me—ruined me!' he murmured.
'O, don't say it!'
she cried in her anguish, jumping up and putting her hand on his shoulder. 'I
can't bear that!'
'Delighting
me deceptively! Why did you do
it—why did you!'
'I began doing it
in kindness to her! How could I do otherwise than try
to save such a simple girl from misery? But I admit that I continued it for
pleasure to myself.'
Raye looked up. 'Why did it give you pleasure?' he
asked.
'I must not tell,'
said she.
He continued to regard
her, and saw that her lips suddenly began to quiver under his scrutiny, and her
eyes to fill and droop. She started aside, and said that she must go to the
station to catch the return train: could a cab be called
immediately?
But Raye went up to her, and
took her unresisting hand. 'Well, to think of such a thing as this!' he said.
'Why, you and I are friends—lovers—devoted lovers—by
correspondence!'
'Yes; I suppose.'
'More.'
'More?'
'Plainly
more. It is no use blinking
that. Legally I have married her—God help us both!—in
soul and spirit I have married you, and no other woman in the world!'
'Hush!'
'But I will not
hush! Why should you try to disguise the full truth, when you have already
owned half of it? Yes, it is between you and me that the bond is—not between me and her! Now I'll say no more.
But, O my cruel one, I think I have one claim upon you!'
She did not say
what, and he drew her towards him, and bent over her. 'If it was all pure
invention in those letters,' he said emphatically, 'give me your cheek only. If
you meant what you said, let it be lips. It is for the first and last time,
remember!'
She put up her
mouth, and he kissed her long. 'You forgive me?' she said crying.
'Yes.'
'But you are
ruined!'
'What matter!' he
said shrugging his shoulders. 'It serves me right!'
She withdrew,
wiped her eyes, entered and bade good-bye to Anna, who had not expected her to
go so soon, and was still wrestling with the letter. Raye
followed Edith downstairs, and in three minutes she
was in a hansom driving to the
He went back to
his wife. 'Never mind the letter, Anna, to-day,' he said gently. 'Put on your
things. We, too, must be off shortly.'
The simple girl,
upheld by the sense that she was indeed married, showed her delight at finding
that he was as kind as ever after the disclosure. She did not know that before
his eyes he beheld as it were a galley, in which he, the fastidious urban, was
chained to work for the remainder of his life, with her, the unlettered
peasant, chained to his side.
Edith travelled back to Melchester that
day with a face that showed the very stupor of grief;
her lips still tingling from the desperate pressure of his kiss. The end of her
impassioned dream had come. When at dusk she reached the Melchester
station her husband was there to meet her, but in his perfunctoriness
and her preoccupation they did not see each other, and
she went out of the station alone.
She walked
mechanically homewards without calling a fly. Entering, she could not bear the
silence of the house, and went up in the dark to where Anna had slept, where
she remained thinking awhile. She then returned to the drawing-room,
and not knowing what she did, crouched down upon the floor.
'I have ruined
him!' she kept repeating. 'I have ruined him; because I would not deal
treacherously towards her!'
In the course of
half an hour a figure opened the door of the
apartment.
'Ah—who's that?'
she said, starting up, for it was dark.
'Your husband—who
should it be?' said the worthy merchant.
'Ah—my husband!—I forgot I had a husband!' she whispered to
herself.
'I missed you at
the station,' he continued. 'Did you see Anna safely tied up? I hope so, for 'twas time.'
'Yes—Anna is
married.'
Simultaneously
with Edith's journey home Anna and her husband were
sitting at the opposite windows of a second-class carriage which sped along to Knollsea. In his hand was a pocket-book
full of creased sheets closely written over. Unfolding them one after another he read them in silence, and sighed.
'What are you
doing, dear Charles?' she said timidly from the other window, and drew nearer
to him as if he were a god.
'
Autumn 1891.